If you’ve set foot in an elementary school recently, you might be familiar with something called a tangram. It’s a puzzle consisting of seven pieces, or “tans”: five triangles in various sizes, one parallelogram and one square.
Sitting in a pile on a third grader’s desk, the tans are little more than a jumble of shapes. But the magic of a tangram puzzle is all the different ways the pieces can be arranged. Together, those same seven polygons can become a butterfly, a bird or a rabbit, just to name a few possibilities. There’s basically no limit to what you can create; it just depends on how you arrange the pieces.
Branding a school district is like piecing together a tangram. You may be looking down at the “pieces” you have to work with—academics, athletics, school culture and more—and struggling to assemble them all into a single cohesive design. You may even be wondering: Doesn’t the district down the road have all these pieces, too? How can you stand out from the competition when you have so much in common?
The tangram teaches us that the same seven shapes can be combined and recombined into an endless variety of designs. Your school district may have the same basic components as any other, but the way you arrange those elements—the image they come together to create—becomes your distinct brand.
In this issue of SchoolCEO, we’re diving deep into the nuances of school branding. We’ll revisit the basics of brand, explaining exactly how to differentiate your district from your competitors. Then, we’ll examine some of the “tans” that make up your district brand—from your superintendent’s personal brand to your employee experience to your physical buildings. With the help of a few expert sources, we’ll even answer questions like: How do you get community buy-in for a rebrand? Why should you involve students in creating your district’s branding and messaging? And once you have a strong brand, how do you maintain it?
The tans of a tangram aren’t significant until you create something bigger with them. In the same way, all the different elements of your district don’t mean much to your community unless they’re working together to create one, cohesive image. Branding takes the complex reality of your district—all the different pieces that make up your schools—and fits everything into one clear, memorable image. But it only works if every single piece is in alignment.
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If you’ve set foot in an elementary school recently, you might be familiar with something called a tangram. It’s a puzzle consisting of seven pieces, or “tans”: five triangles in various sizes, one parallelogram and one square.
Sitting in a pile on a third grader’s desk, the tans are little more than a jumble of shapes. But the magic of a tangram puzzle is all the different ways the pieces can be arranged. Together, those same seven polygons can become a butterfly, a bird or a rabbit, just to name a few possibilities. There’s basically no limit to what you can create; it just depends on how you arrange the pieces.
Branding a school district is like piecing together a tangram. You may be looking down at the “pieces” you have to work with—academics, athletics, school culture and more—and struggling to assemble them all into a single cohesive design. You may even be wondering: Doesn’t the district down the road have all these pieces, too? How can you stand out from the competition when you have so much in common?
The tangram teaches us that the same seven shapes can be combined and recombined into an endless variety of designs. Your school district may have the same basic components as any other, but the way you arrange those elements—the image they come together to create—becomes your distinct brand.
In this issue of SchoolCEO, we’re diving deep into the nuances of school branding. We’ll revisit the basics of brand, explaining exactly how to differentiate your district from your competitors. Then, we’ll examine some of the “tans” that make up your district brand—from your superintendent’s personal brand to your employee experience to your physical buildings. With the help of a few expert sources, we’ll even answer questions like: How do you get community buy-in for a rebrand? Why should you involve students in creating your district’s branding and messaging? And once you have a strong brand, how do you maintain it?
The tans of a tangram aren’t significant until you create something bigger with them. In the same way, all the different elements of your district don’t mean much to your community unless they’re working together to create one, cohesive image. Branding takes the complex reality of your district—all the different pieces that make up your schools—and fits everything into one clear, memorable image. But it only works if every single piece is in alignment.